Today is the kind of Ohio day that is the poster child for "spring" -- dry, sunny (but not oppressive), and about 70 degrees when all is said and done. Therefore, it's a rarity... a gift from Mother Nature that seemingly comes but a few times each year. This is the kind of day that shows up on your front porch at 10:00 in the morning (if you're not at work), knocks impatiently, and when you answer demands that you go outside and DO something.

Yep, today is one of those days. It showed up at my door. And I'm sitting here at my computer.

A big part of the reason why I've ignored the call of spring is that, while I enjoy being outside, I'm not necessarily an outside person. Being fair-skinned and having a general lack of hair has a lot to do with this, and I am more likely to burst into flames after exposure to the sun than a lot of people are. But really, it has more to do with not being able to excel at outdoor activities. Over the years, I've settled into a few things that make for good outdoor recreation -- cycling, photography -- but for the most part, I've found little that's agreeable with my "inside" frame of mind.

There are times that I wonder if a lack of success at team sports as a child was the cause of all of this. I was never, ever a so-called gym class hero. I think I excelled at a total of two activities in all of the requisite class time -- volleyball and scooter ball (where you sit and roll around on scooters, passing a playground ball around to try and make a goal) -- and when I say "excelled" it's more of a personal expression of not totally washing out and thus earning the derision of my classmates. Yeah, I was that guy. I was one of the last picks even when it came to kickball. The only exception to this was playing four-square during recess, where for some reason I was good enough to play with some of the guys that were GOOD at sports. But that was recess -- another whole universe compared to gym class.

My mother, to her credit, was pretty good at trying to keep me involved with the "team sports" thing until I entered middle school. During the course of my childhood, I played tee-ball (which you can't keep playing after a certain age because of embarrassment), soccer (quit because I'm not a good runner), indoor soccer (more success than outdoor, had one really good game playing as the goalkeeper, but quit due to ongoing lack of athleticism), and then there was the most infamous sporting experience of my early years, Little League.

Good God, how can I sum up Little League?

Okay, during the spring of my second grade year, I played Little League in a school where the sport was so popular that there were TWO teams competing against other elementary teams in the district. My personal highlights of this adventure can be summed up as such: I was number 13, I played center field, I couldn't make a throw back to the infield to save my redheaded life, my bat made contact with the ball one time the entire season -- I was then thrown out at first, and the number of times I was walked can be measured on the hand of a guy who's missing some fingers. That was Little League. When I thought about playing the next year, I'm almost certain my mother actually discouraged me from going on.

I suppose it's not entirely fair to blame sports for a lack of outdoor enthusiasm, because now that I'm thinking about it, I did plenty inside as well, and not even in a strictly "team" sense. Like dozens of other kids my age who saw The Karate Kid, I did that for a while, and decided that it wasn't for me. I joined a bowling league when I was in middle school and had a decent time with that, but I made absolutely no progress as a bowler, which -- in retrospect -- maybe isn't that bad of a thing. Oh, and I spent a number of years taking swimming lessons which, according to Mom, I met with moderate success but apparently gave up due to a lack of interest. Swimming was one of the last things I tried, though, so it's possible that the previous emotional damage suffered had finally gotten to be a little much. Damn that year in Little League.

So that left me with... oh, golf. Golf is a curious one for me. See, I come from an entire family of golfers, generations of them at this point, currently culminating in a sister and cousin that earned golf scholarships for college, a father that coaches a successful high school girl's team and an aunt who was his assistant coach for a while. So the genetic markers are probably there to BE a decent golfer, but as of yet I haven't really come into my own. Or anybody's own, for that matter. There are days when I go out and play and I just can't cope with the level of frustration that I achieve, and instead of trying to improve my game I decide that it makes much more sense to just walk around and enjoy everyone else's game. I suppose that since I spent a lot of time walking courses with my dad when I was growing up (as he was, is, and ever shall be a member of some league), that the role of "golf observer" is much more my natural state. That being said, I would probably get better if I practiced more, but... that involves being outside. I think that was generally the problematic point that I set out to explore at the beginning of this column.

All in all, after thinking about it, there's probably not one single thing that turned me into a denizen of the indoor world, replete with books, computers, and games. Instead, it might make more sense to think that maybe all those little negative experiences and a general lack of athleticism teamed up on me to make me the inside guy than I am today. It’s so much more pleasant to sit here and write, even if it occasionally means leaving perfect weather like this despondent on the front porch.

Hey, at least I've got the windows open.